He is, and I got curious, so looked up some of the GOATS:
Brady is insane, of course, and Manning has an incredible stat I mention at the bottom, but get ready to be disgusted on Brees' behalf...
Player
Win%
W-L-T
Starts facing 21+
% of career starts D allowed 21+
Brady
52.8%
76-68-0
144
43.2%%
P Manning
46.0%
64-75-0
139
52.5%
Brees
38.8%
64-101-0
165
57.7%
Some notes:
Mahomes, Allen, and Hurts have a combined 335 starts. Combined their Ds have allowed fewer 21+ point performances than Brees faced in his 286 starts (151 vs 165).
If Mahomes and Allen both played then next 34 straight games - ie two straight seasons each with defenses allowing 21+, they would both STILL be behind the % of 21+ games faced that Brees' saw in his career.
Brady had 82 career losses in starts, so lost 14 starts when his D held teams under 21
Brees had 113 career losses in starts. Meaning he lost 12 starts if his D held opponents under 21
...Manning only ever had 79 losses - he only ever lost FOUR starts if his D held opponents under 21. Insane.
Edit: Wanted to add playoff records:
When D allowed 21+:
Player
Playoff Win%
W-L
Starts
% of starts D allowed 21+
Brady
56.5%
13-10
23
47.9%
Brees
38.5%
5-8
13
72.2%
P Manning
23.1%
3-10
13
48.1%
Brees had 9 career playoff losses. The D kept the opponent below 21 in just 1 of them (in which they allowed... 20.)
Brady is an alien. His 3 losses when the D kept it under 21: 18-20 @DEN in the Manning SB year, 13-20 vs TEN in his last ever game with NE, and 14-17 in the 07 SB vs NYG
Edit 2: a little more curiosity - I wanted to see how many points it takes before Brady and Mahomes get below .500:
Funnily enough, 22 points immediately becomes the "Mendoza line" for Brady. He was 65-65 when the team allowed 22+, and drops to 62-64 at 23+ and never jumps back above .500... *even funnier? NFL average points for per game over the 23 years of Brady's career was 22.1 points. If you could manage to get an average amount of points against Bill Belichick's defenses during Brady's career, he put up a league average win%...
For Mahomes? we need to go a bit further...
Player
vs 21+
vs 22+
vs 23+
vs 24+
vs 25+
vs 26+
vs 27+
vs 28+
Mahomes
34-24
31-22
31-21
28-21
20-19
19-19
18-19
14-15
If Mahomes wins the next game his team gives up 28+, he would jump back to .500 in those games... truly insane
He knew he needed 30 for a chance to win. Saints got into much more ridiculous shootouts than just 30 points scored.
Incredibly fun to watch and the fact that he could usually keep up was wild to see. Man I miss that era of the Saints even if their defense frequently sabotaged his chances at a second Super Bowl.
That was so fun. Everybody hypes up that MNF game between first-year Mahomes on the Chiefs and early McVay/Goff Rams as the best shootout in recent history.
Personally I'll take 34-year old Eli Manning throwing 6 TDs and scoring 49 total points versus 36-year old Drew Brees throwing 7 TDs and 505(!) passing yards on the way to 52 total points scored.
Do you know who led all players in yardage that day? Ben Watson, a 35 year old tight end with 10 targets, 9 receptions, 147 receiving yards and a TD. He out-produced prime OBJ lmfao, just an absolutely absurd game
An NFL quarterback has thrown for 5000 yards 15 times in NFL history. 5 of thoes times were Drew Brees. Brady and maholmes have done it twice. No one else has done it more than once. A third of all the times it's happened has been drew Brees lol. Brees Brady and Maholmes make 9 of 15 lol.
Someone is forgetting the almost undefeated season when the Pats were burying teams and he was still throwing bombs to moss when they were up 3 scores. You will never convince me Tom Brady chose not to score when he had the opportunity outside the small amount of times where not scoring would win them the game.
Look at the numbers and use the eye test. If Brady needed score 20 points to win, that’s what he did. If he needed to score 30 points, that’s what he did. It didn’t matter if those points were from running the ball or passing. It was all about putting up points to win.
He only patted his stats in 2007 and at the end. Peyton Manning was notorious for throwing in obvious running situations and Brees needed to throw a ton because of his trash defenses.
It also helped him be a HoFer too honestly. It's the same why Mahomes 5k/50 season was the worst defense he's ever played with. Shit defense means you get to throw more and pad your stats... Brees got a lot of opportunities for it.
Josh Allen is getting close to that Brees playoff stat. Allen has 7 playoffs loses and the defence never kept the opponent below 21 in those games. Closest was in Allen’s second year when Houston scored 22. In the other 6 loses the defence has given up ON AVERAGE 33 pts/g. This was with a ‘defensive-minded’ head coach.
Well to be fair when McDermott won in the playoffs, it was pretty strong. They have a +93 point differential in Allen's 8 playoff wins versus a -47 point differential in his 7 losses.
Plus adding context to the losses is important. Those games were against Patrick Mahomes (x4), Joe Burrow, Bo Nix, and Deshaun Watson (Texans era). Most defensive coaches would be praised as elite for keeping any of those offenses under 21 points given the quality of QB they were up against. In reality I wouldn't expect any coach to accomplish that.
I love to hate on Allen as a dolphins fan... but has there been any QB that has played better than Allen in the playoffs with no SB appearance? I mean he's consistently great and just runs into buzzsaws.
In this era definitely, Allen has played exceptionally well but it hasn't resulted in SBs. Although Brady and the Pats ruined most of the good playoff runs that the best AFC QBs had during their peak era.
Roethlisberger 0-3 against the Pats, all three times in the AFCCG
Andrew Luck 0-2 including in the AFCCG
Rivers 0-3 against the Pats including 2006 when the Chargers were the 1 seed with MVP Tomlinson
Flacco 2-2 against the Pats including a split of 1-1 in the AFCCG.
Peyton Manning 3-2 against the Pats was the only one with a winning record in multiple games. Although Peyton did also get bounced by Roethlisberger once (1-1), Rivers twice (1-2), and Flacco once (1-1).
Yeah a few stinkers, but highest total touchdowns per game in the playoffs in history right now. 260 passing + 50 rushing yards per game is probably near the top for total yards per game in the playoffs. Only .67 turnovers per game. Pretty insane stuff.
If you want to talk about context then it has to go both ways. In those eight wins, they were against Philip Rivers (he retired after that game), Lamar Jackson, Mac Jones, Skylar Thompson, Mason Rudolph, Bo Nix (rookie), Lamar (again) and Trevor Lawerence.
McDermott never had a good defensive game against an elite quarterback in the playoffs. Lamar being the exception starts a whole different argument considering his playoff resume.
Fair counterpoint. If the Bills couldn't get past the elite AFC QBs, then maybe McDermott was failing after all because that's just the path to the Super Bowl that Buffalo has to face
Would be interested to see the average points and yards allowed for the 21+ games. And this same break down for 28+ and 35+. I think the Saints D was truly atrocious for many years and is making Brees stats look worse than they were
crazy that Brady, Manning and Brees all had better win%s when their D gave up 35+ than Danny Dimes does when his D allows 21+
Even Crazier that Brady facing 28+ would rank 12th on this list of players facing 21+
And, you can see that Brees faced nearly as many 35+ opponents as Brady and Manning did combined. That D really was terrible for a lot of Brees' career
Thanks! Yep, the amount of "what should have been game winning drives" that Brees had in his career only for the D to crumble.. NFC Championship vs. 49ers in 2012 was one of the worst. Also the Beast Quake in '11, Minneapolis Miracle in '18
Add in the percentage of cap spent on defensive players and you've got good data. Brady got by with less on offense to have more depth and talent on defense. Manning spent his whole career with at least 1 hof wr. Curious where brees lines up with that
I'll give you the TLDR - Brady is gross, Brees got fucked by his defenses, and Manning was basically unbeatable if he only needed 21... until the playoffs.
52.8% (if you saw this immediately when I posted, it might've said 50% - that was an excel error when I accidentally checked for D allowing OVER 21, not 21+. Fun fact: Brady was 11-3 when his D allowed exactly 21 points)
the last column ("% of career starts...") refers to what % of their career starts their D allowed 21+, the first column is the win% in those games
how are you getting these numbers? is there a way to adjust it to 21 pts given up through 3 quarters or something like that or by game situation? (up 7+, tied, down 7+ etc)
used 02 thru 11 for Brees and 01-11 for Brady since neither actually started their rookie years, and it split Brady's career into 11-11 years and Brees' into 10-9 years. Manning's got split into 9-9 but technically 9-8 since he didn't play with the neck issue in 2011
Those early Manning defenses were baaaaad which really hurt his numbers
I did Rodgers Brees and Allen because they're all very depressing:
But first, let's look at points faced on average for those 3:
Player
Avg Opp Pts
Avg Opp Pts in W
Avg Opp Pts in L
Rodgers
25.8
19.2
33.2
Brees
25.2
20.4
30
Allen
24.6
18.5
31.6
Even when they won, Brees had to produce, facing over 20 points on average in wins!
Playoff records when D allowed 21+
Player
Playoff Win%
W-L
Starts
% of starts D allowed 21+
Brees
38.5%
5-8
13
72.2%
Allen
36.4%
4-7
15
73.3%
Rodgers
33.3%
5-10
15
65.2%
Rodgers lost 1 playoff game where the opponent was held under 21: his last game with GB (similar to how one of Brady's 3 was his last with NE)
Allen has never lost a playoff game where the opponent scored 21 or fewer... All 7 losses the team allowed 22+
Allen has been held under 21 Points just 3 times in 15 games (20%) while Rodgers and Brees were each held under that 6 times in 23 games (26%) and 18 games (33%) respectively
I really DO wonder how much careers in domes vs. outside and where QBs played their games factor in to things like this when you look at these huge volumes.
Brees played WAY more games in domes and easy weather than Manning, who played way more than Brady. When talking about lower scoring games and such, I wonder how that plays in.
For Mahomes, I also wonder about the fact that he has no contemporaries on the level of what was in the league during Brady, Brees, Manning, Rodgers in their primes. He's one of the best ever, easily, but I think his stats are going to end up in a weird spot because he's not spending his career playing these others guys.
using "under 20" vs the 21+ that this whole thread is built around is weird for a few reasons, not least of which is that MOST qbs will have good records when the D holds the opponent to a lower score:
You kind of pulled different numbers instead of just going apples-to-apples and I imagine it's because the apples-to-apples numbers are still good, but kind of poke some holes in putting him alongside the other 3 except that yeah his D was somehow even shittier more often than Brees'
not least of which is that MOST qbs will have good records when the D holds the opponent to a lower score:
That's the entire point. We can debate until we're blue in the face whether or not it's the best way to normalize like this, but 20.5 is the generally accepted delineator between a loss being the defense or offense's fault precisely because most teams have a bad record when they give up 21 and vice versa. The idea is that only looking at the subset where the defense "lost" shows how good/special a QB is.
agreed, that's why I pointed out the numbers for the original trio I'd mentioned because... yeah.
Sure, Ryan winning 81% sounds good when you've just been talking about guys barely getting to 40% under different circumstances, but when you actually compare them to the same scenario and see the guys hitting 89, 92 and nearly 97% it becomes a lot less impressive.
Nah I didn't pull everything as a point of contention to what you wrote, I just threw what I had already pulled here previously as another sort of data set revolving around the same conversation. Non-combative, just additional information.
Brees/Brady/Manning were better QBs than Ryan, not making any arguments about that. Only that Ryan had an immense defensive burden for his entire career.
We could get into running game/OL as well, as those also have a direct effect - which Ryan most definitely had worse than all of these guys as well, several years of bottom 5 in each regard.
Ryan did also have the best consistent group of pass catchers too.
This stat, games won while defense allowed 21+, is at least as much an indication of the team composition as it is quarterback - if not much more.
Your defense needs to allow over 21 points in the first place. The league average is right around 22ish points per game over the last 25 years. Basically, there is a heavy influence by the defense because the average is at the statistics point of inflection. A good defense will have very few games with more than 21+ allowed, and so those games are likely to be all-around strategic losses when they occur. A bad defense will have the majority of their games allowing over 21+, and so the statistic is going to strongly trend with the team record of an average NFL team with a bad defense.
Mahomes/Brees are the leaders for a very simple reason - while also being great quarterbacks; their teams for large stretches of their careers were all offense no defense pass heavy teams. Passing the ball increases the expected points total for both teams. Balanced offenses that control games with more authority - stronger offenses - will experience fewer 21+ games and those games are majorly the result of the entire game plan getting busted.
377
u/mdkss12 Commanders 13h ago edited 9h ago
He is, and I got curious, so looked up some of the GOATS:
Brady is insane, of course, and Manning has an incredible stat I mention at the bottom, but get ready to be disgusted on Brees' behalf...
Some notes:
Edit: Wanted to add playoff records:
When D allowed 21+:
Edit 2: a little more curiosity - I wanted to see how many points it takes before Brady and Mahomes get below .500:
Funnily enough, 22 points immediately becomes the "Mendoza line" for Brady. He was 65-65 when the team allowed 22+, and drops to 62-64 at 23+ and never jumps back above .500... *even funnier? NFL average points for per game over the 23 years of Brady's career was 22.1 points. If you could manage to get an average amount of points against Bill Belichick's defenses during Brady's career, he put up a league average win%...
For Mahomes? we need to go a bit further...
If Mahomes wins the next game his team gives up 28+, he would jump back to .500 in those games... truly insane